As seen from space: Volcanic eruption creates new island in the red sea

December 28, 2011
By Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today

Looking for some new lake-front property? Heres the newest available on the planet. Volcanic activity in the Red Sea that started in mid-December has created what looks like a new island. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASAs Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured a high-resolution, natural-color image on December 23, 2011 showing an apparent island where previously there was none. Here, a thick plume of volcanic ash still rises from the new island.

See below for an image from 2007 of the same region.

According to the NASA Earth Observatory website, the volcanic activity occurred along the Zubair Group, a collection of small islands off the west coast of Yemen. The islands poke above the sea surface, rising from a shield volcano. This region is part of the Red Sea Rift where the African and Arabian tectonic plates pull apart and new ocean crust regularly forms.

According to news reports, fishermen witnessed lava fountains reaching up to 30 meters (90 feet) tall on December 19.

Looking rather otherworldly, this haunting view of Shikotan-to island shows ghostly swirls of sea ice surrounding the snow-covered volcanic island. Also known as Ostrov Shikotan, this island is at the southern end of a volcanic ...

Wow! What an amazing and detailed top-down view of an active volcano! This is the Nabro Volcano, which has been erupting since June 12, 2011. It sits in an isolated region on the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia and satellite ...

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One would expect Arabic names or African names, but not these. Something like Al-Aqiq Island and Al-Makhwah Island, or Ma'ereba Island and Shambuko Island, would sound much more plausible. Or did Google get to give these names?

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Many who like to fashion themsleves as "scientific" automatically take a contemptuous, confrontational attitude toward anything associated with religion, even if it means being insipid. Many will even deliberately write the name of the singular Deity with a lowercase "g". Interesting for the apparent psyh\chological reinforcement that even PhyOrg decides to write a pace associated with religion, the Red Sea, with lowercase initial letters.